Jeremy Weaver

Maybe it is because I like convenience, or maybe it is because I'm lazy, but I like things that are automatic. As a kid I had a friend whose parents had a car with automatic windows. Push a button and the window went up. Push a button and the windows went down. And I had to spend my adolescent days hand cranking my parent's car window up and down with a little knob. Talk about jealous!

So as I got older and made my own choices in life I looked for things that were automatic. That includes my car windows, my thermostat in my house, online bill pay and one of my favorites - direct deposit. So when I had the question of 'How does Electronic Remittance posting work?' I was more than happy to talk about this automatic wonder.

An Electronic Remittance Advice (ERA) is nothing more than an electronic EOB generated from the insurance company that your medical billing system can read from and write into your system (say it with me) automatically!

Typically you have to enroll your providers with payers to be able to send claims to them electronically. Some payers like Medicare require that you do so. While you are enrolling for electronic claims, be sure to enroll for ERAs. Once this is complete the insurance company will send you an electronic posting file along with your electronic claims verification reports.
With very minimal configuration from your Vendor you should be able to have your medical practice billing software automatically post that EOB information directly into your system with a push (or click) of a button.

Payment and adjustments will be written into your system ... automatically!
Transfers to secondary insurances will take place ... automatically!
Reports will be available to make sure that you are in balance
And if for some reason there is a payment that the system can't match to a charge, it will print out on an 'Exception Report' for you to manually look at. There is no concern for something getting lost or a payment not getting posted.

A while back I helped a client start posting Indiana Medicare ERAs for the first time. Her quote to me was, "That's it? What used to take me hours to post payments manually took less than a minute!"

So if you are looking for a huge office time saver and possibly a way to reduce FTEs, consider posting Electronic Remittance into your Medical Billing System!